two hundred and seven words. 1

by kvennarad

he girl came into the sin of knowing at the age of three; this must be, as she recalled, always recalls, her fourth birthday, and the fact that there was never rain. There was certainly a fall, a pigeon on the kitchen window sill, but her dreams and nightmares were recalled, always are: her mother waking her, just as she did on her birthday, but in that silence that can only be dreamt; a monster in the garden, sitting, eating an apple, somehow, a big man with no head; a monster, a draped man with no head, black cloak tattered, walking wicked quick along a lit tunnel, round walls, tiled; each monster musicked by the pulse in her ears, catch her if they can. The taste of wet earth tried out because of its likeness to potatoes and gravy, an experiment into the nature of similar things, showing her early grasp of philosophy in an antic school. Her own smell of yeast. There was never cold, there was never heat, there was only the confusion of knowing without the understanding that came with smiles and caresses. That sin she came into entered with the brilliance of a made-up word, her first gluttony on the fast-feast of language

It is, in fact, an extract – or rather an isolated part – of an autobiographical project that I have had in mind for some time. The problem I have been dealing with has been how to make it poetry rather than self-absorption.